Stephen Knight (26 September 1951 at Hainault, Essex - 25 July 1985) was a British author.
He is best known for the books Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution (1976) and The Brotherhood (1984). Both books suggest there is a secret cabal of Masons running most aspects of British society.
Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution suggested that those murders were part of a conspiracy between Masons and the royal family, a claim which is not accepted by historians. Nevertheless, the book became popular as the inspiration for works of fiction, among them the 1978 film Murder by Decree by Bob Clark and the graphic novel From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. The latter was adapted, very loosely, into a film by the Hughes brothers in 2001.
The Brotherhood was published at a time when Freemasonry was coming under increased scrutiny in the United Kingdom. Later Parliamentary Inquiries in Britain resulted in Freemasonry becoming a declarable interest in public employment, especially in the Judicial System and Police.
Knight also wrote the books Cruelly Murdered, Requiem at Rogano and The Killing of Justice Godfrey. He was a religious follower of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and, as a part of this interest, took the name Swami Puja Debal. He struggled with epilepsy for much of his life and was discovered to have a brain tumour in 1980 while taking part in the documentary TV programme Horizon. The tumour was removed, but returned in 1984. Knight died in 1985 at the age of 33.